


It's Never Too Late To Give Up On Your Dreams

by HerbertBest



Category: Ninja Sex Party (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Band as Family, Breaking Up The Band, Breaking With Tradition, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming Out, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Getting the Band Together, Growing Up, Mental Link, Multi, New Lives, Panic Attacks, Road Trips, Running Away, Slow Burn, Trauma, family conflicts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 21:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15495375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerbertBest/pseuds/HerbertBest
Summary: A backstory and an alternate history for Ninja Sex Party.





	It's Never Too Late To Give Up On Your Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Onewarmline for beta, and thank you to grumpygays for [this](https://gaygrumpart.tumblr.com/post/176430989110/i-participated-in-game-grumps-big-bang-2018-and) awesome artwork!

Why hello there.

Don’t be scared. Sit down. Pull up a chair. I’m about to bless you with a story that you won’t believe. It’s about a brave, time-traveling ninja knight, his silent ninja partner, a princess alien in need of help to save her home planet, and her helpers – a bunch of yellow minion-shaped things that die a lot when Brian steps on them for being totally fucking annoying. There are ice caves and laser fights and big guns and hot boobs and a whole lot of awesome whipped cream fights. It’s totally fucking badass and you’re going to shit yourself at the total awesomeness as I unveil it, step by step and piece by piece. You’ve never heard a motherfuckin’ story like this, and you’ll never hear one again.

Yes. As you might have guessed – it’s the true origin story of my little band. What have I heard it called by you mortals? 

Oh. Ninja Sex Party!

***

_But._

_In the real world…_

****

Danny had been born singing. His parents often worried about how often he did it – peering at him from the corner of their vision, concerned that he might be some sort of demi-god that would kill the world before he could change it with that frighteningly clear, pure voice of his. Was he some sort of giant? His parents seemed to think so. They were honest about how he could belt it out and disturb them with his vibrato – because he was terribly loud, and terribly frequent with it – his voice would ring out suddenly like a bell on a hill, almost violent in its intensity. His mother swore he could shatter glass with it ‘like that boy in the drum movie’, she said, talking about a film she’d recently seen with his father.

Danny only knew that he loved to sing, even though he was the third most powerful ninja in his county and the third most powerful in his family (his sister and grandma could _hit!_ ). Danny took all of this into his little ears, absorbing all of their words with a curious tilt of his head. He didn’t know why they were so worried about it. As far as he was concerned, he was just really, really good at singing. Maybe the best in all the land.

But he played with his toys and joined the basketball team. In the afternoons he pretended he was a knight, an airplane, a dog. For the child of a couple of badass ninjas, it was a pretty normal existence, and a pretty regular childhood.

*** 

He was a teenager – lonely and geeky – when the idea of sending him to a dojo first came up. He was ready, and everyone knew it – he felt pent up by his normal existence, yearning to break free. His mother said it would give him respect and discipline. His father hoped it would settle him down.

Danny just knew he was ready for a change. The karate training was a step toward that.

He was bad at violence for a very long time. Until he learned how to disconnect from his feelings and fears when he went to create his chaos. Until he was eighteen he devoted himself entirely to matching up to his dad’s prowess. He could run up a wall, strangle a man with piano wire and order a gourmet meal in six languages by then. His senseis reported glowingly about his talents, his endless and boundless energy. Soon he would be at the top of his class, would graduate to becoming a master ninja. He knew that it was a condition, that he would be forced to become a good ninja and live up to his grandmother’s legacy to stay with the clan.

Danny hated it. 

He hated hurting people. He hated washing someone’s blood from beneath his nails every night. He hated the sleepless nights, the practiced rituals, how the dojo demanded he stay carefully, neatly, within the margins of the rules. All he wanted to do was run away.

At night he closed his eyes and pretended he was back with his family. Wished on a star and hoped that Dana’s training was going well.

The only person in the dojo who understood him was a guy named Brian. Four years his senior, he had graduated to the state of master and was often away from the dojo on a high-money mission. Brian’s only soft spot seemed to be Danny, and Danny took rampant advantage of that softness, begging for more time out, for extra treats, and for a rest from their duties. Sometimes he received what he wished; sometimes he was forced to keep going and defy his own expectations. 

Sometimes, honestly, Danny had no idea how Brian really felt for him. Sometimes he gave him mercy and kindness. Sometimes, he pretended to listen when he spoke, only to treat him brutally during sparring practice. Brian tolerated him- ignored him when there was a mission that meant more to him than minor revenge on the nervous new recruit. Maybe stomached him. Sometimes he looked at him with pure hatred, which Danny always met with sunshine; he didn’t understand why anyone could dislike him when there was so much going on in the world that was ugly and frightening.

In short: they stuck together, disagreements and fights notwithstanding. Danny couldn’t say why he was happy to keep company with the guy beyond his quick reflexes and whipcord-strong reaction time. The guy was mild-mannered, quiet, and unassuming, but he could cut a throat like nobody’s business. They were opposites, destined for opposing paths.

Danny ran through those years in a chaotic pel mel toward ultimate freedom. He knew that when he turned eighteen he’d be able to go into business for himself as an independent contractor – assassinate who he wished to. Or not. 

He knew what his parents expected him to do, and the idea made him quake inside.

They didn’t know that he spend many of those training years running off to night clubs that had karaoke evenings. He’d belt his heart out to the backing track and pretend he was in front of a huge, adoring audience, their pleasure radiating up toward him and making him smile.

Maybe he wasn’t the best in the world, but he was good at it. He was tough enough. But his heart wasn’t in it, and everyone who knew him could tell just by looking at him that it was true.

Then his first double-kill. He would remember the man’s face forever. He was a yakuza who’d upset the head of the dojo, so Danny had been sent out to eliminate him. He did so without hesitation and was appalled by the sounds, sight and smells of death. He hated himself, truly and completely, for the first time in his young life. Wished and hoped that the world would end him, before he had the chance to truly bloom.

Brian found him crying alone in the showers afterwards. He got Danny’s attention by punching him in the shoulder, which just made him cry harder. 

After a long time, Danny looked up and saw Brian standing there, the tips of his toes tapping impatiently. Brian’s hands formed the words that Danny had learned to understand. _You don’t belong in this place._ Well, it was nothing but the truth. 

“I know I don’t,” he admitted. “I want to be happy. I want to _dance._ ” That was the real truth, the one he’d been desperately hiding for months. Brian reacted to it.

He shrugged. _I am the top ninja in this dojo. We may both leave this place and go to a new life, but you must never say anything against your senseis._

“I don’t want anything to do with being a ninja,” he admitted. “You can do what you like but – if you can get me out of here I’ll do anything, man.”

 _All right._ Brian said. _I’ll tell them that you’re on a mission with me. I was going to be the one to train you anyway – now I’ll just be training you for a longer period. Get dressed, pack your runsack. I’ll be waiting for you down by the kitchens, at the loading dock. Have your papers ready. We’ll be gone with the dawn._

“How do I know I can trust you?” Danny asked.

 _What choice do you have?_ Brian replied.

Danny considered his words in silence for a short time. But he nodded his agreement. Where else could he go? Not back to his parents in shame, admitting he was too soft to be a real ninja. Not to college, where he didn’t want to be at all. His heart was the drumbeat and his blood was the river he’d follow back to it.

From this day on, he’d keep on the beat. From this day onward, he’d _dance._

*** 

Brian was waiting for him by the back exit. They walked four blocks, then a city mile, until the dojo was no more than a series of dimly lit lights leading down a dark and private road.

Brian grabbed Danny’s arm and signed _Our getaway car is behind the McDonalds._

Danny felt the pressure he’d been carrying around with him release itself in a whoosh. “Oh cool! Can we get some McNuggets and a couple of large fries?”

Ninja Brian raised an eyebrow.

 

***

The van had seen better days, to say the least; it was tattered and rusty, and had a very large spray painting of a unicorn taking wing on the side of it. Also, Danny noted as he nearly swallowed his meal whole, the smell of fries and burgers soaked into its walls super easily. Danny didn’t complain; he was relishing the taste of junk food for the first time in months, and Brian had agreed to drive for the first hundred miles. Feeling comfortable in his skin for the first time in almost a year, he let the rocking of the van lull him to sleep.

For the first time he didn’t dream of violence and bloodshed. He didn’t recall war, famine or pestilence. He didn’t think of the horrors that he’d brought down on the heads of others – guilty or not. He dreamed of beautiful things instead. Girls in bikinis, unicorns. Delicious food. Rad guitar music with kickass synth-heavy backup.

And in all of those dreams Brian was there, playing along – and watching him with that strange intensity of his.

 

****

They stowed away and home – van intact – in the belly of a cargo plane belonging to one of Brian’s great friends. For hours they ate stale bread and drank water, playing cards and meditating; if Dan concentrated hard enough by the end of it he could almost hear Brian’s thoughts in the back of his mind, shouting and echoing up like bubbling champagne. 

“Brian, is it possible for people who are very attuned with one another to hear each other’s thoughts?”

The voice that echoed in his head made him leap. _Only if you spend a lot of years practicing astral projection. Like me. I’m a master of it._

“Wow, you sound…really whiny and nasally. I didn’t think you’d sound like that at all.”

_Well, this is what I sound like, Daniel. Get used to it._

“Cool, cool.” He felt the van jostle back and forth as the plane came to a stuttering stop. “So where did they put us?”

_The place where I was raised. New Jersey._

“Dude, you too?! I’m from there! Sick!” Danny reached for a high five, but no high five was coming. Brian stared at him and crossed his arms, grumpily.

_Let’s simply get off of the subject. We’ll go to Jersey and we’ll do a few jobs until we have money enough to fix the band. There are a few guys from Canada that I know. They’ll help us get ready._

“Ready for what?”

_Los Angeles. You want to be a star, don’t you?_

Danny’s heart leapt into his throat at the very idea. Of course he wanted to be a star! But it was going to take a lot of work to get there, scary, hard-pressing, even dangerous. But he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to become a famous singer. He couldn’t imagine himself as anyone else, doing anything else, spending time and wasting his days doing anything nobler. There was something about Ninja Brian, something that made Danny trust him above all others. It was possible that they had what others in their clan called a sympathy - what Brian simply called a unique connection. Members of the clan who were sympathetic to each other could project their thoughts, even see into the thoughts and feelings of the person they shared an intense bond with. The idea was frightening to Danny; he wanted his mind to belong only to himself, his thoughts only to be his own. If he and Brian were truly connected in that manner then living in the mind of a vicious killer for hours at at a time sounded like pure hell.

Yet he wanted to be there with Brian. It was his destiny shouting his name, he realized with an abrupt shudder of delight.

“Yeah. I definitely want to be a star,” he grinned.

 _All right. Then come with me. I’ll make you one._ Brian’s self-assurance was completely puzzling. Danny didn’t ask questions. He stayed braced in his seat as the cargo hold open, and the van roared its way out of the belly of the areal beast.

*** 

The place Brian found for them was a tiny row house in which four other people dwelled. Dan had more private space than he’d had at his dojo, and he knew this was just a temporary stop between here and his destiny. During the night he filled notebooks with thick reams of lyrics.

Brian added music when he could. Brian came back soaked in blood and wearily satisfied every single night. He always made enough for them to eat with, enough for them to save toward van repairs, to buy Brian a keyboard and Danny a microphone.

Danny let his hair grow thick and wild, and he helped around the neighborhood doing odd things. He flirted with girls, played with children, and watched butterflies.

But mostly, he waited for something to happen.

***

It took a month, but Brian finally saved up enough money to repair the van. When it was finished it was a marvel; its purple unicorn shone even brighter than before, flapping against a background of pure white space debris. Danny took the keys and they packed up their minimal clothing, and moved to a small apartment in Jersey. 

_I think we should try to develop an act,_ Brian signed. 

“About what, Brian? All we know is being ninjas.”

_Exactly. What we know how to do is ninja. So I suppose the act should include the truth. To a degree._

“Wouldn’t that effect our whole deal with the clan?”

He shook his head. _They’re not that interested in trying to keep our connection secret. But we must respect it. That’s why we can’t mock them – or the sacred art of ninjas. Only ourselves._

“Right,” Danny said. He smiled, in spite of himself. “It’s a really pretty day. Maybe if we’re lucky our apartment won’t be so bad.

***

It wasn’t very bad – in fact it was a haven frequently occupied by nurses and flight attendants, whose long hours meant they were never at home to complain about Danny and Brian’s late hours and morning songwriting sessions.

Danny managed to strike up a friendship with one of these women. Her name was Kristen – (he remembered this clearly; no, it was not Charlie, Carol or Cherise, as he would joke in some song he wrote years after the bleeding stopped) had a small daughter named Amanda and frequent flier miles that took them to Paris one afternoon.

They made love on perfumed sheets, and by the end of the long two week vacation he had some idea of what girls liked. He wallowed in the pleasure, and made plans for the kind of life they’d have together – him, Kristen and Amanda.

Two months later, Kristen told him she was getting back together with her ex-husband. She was sorry for hurting Danny. Could he stay in touch?

He didn’t think her husband would like that idea and he didn’t really feel like killing a man in trial by combat, so he said no.

***

That was how Danny lost his virginity.

Later he would lie and say it was an orgy. That many beautiful women took his cherry, all of them at once – exploding the shit out of that cherry. Turning him into a man, in allcaps. That there were alien women and they rode him sore. That he traveled through time and space and had a threesome with Marie Antoinette and Cleopatra.

The jokes about crying came later. They were the truest part of the entire song.

**** 

They were meditating after finishing the last song on the album. That was the best way to get a mental link up and running with Ninja Brian, Danny had discovered. So knee to knee they sat and closed their eyes, shutting out the outside world and tried to open up the mental link between them to flourish.

The first time that happened, Danny had screamed his throat raw. But now he was used to it, in his own weird way. It was as it always was within Brian’s head, there was blood, agony and fluffy animals. In Brian’s mind Danny saw the violence he disliked; muted consciously by Brian, likely. He saw tea and cookies and knitting and stuffed animals, too, but wouldn’t mention those to the ninja. IT would likely upset him, and result in him closing his mind against Danny permanently. 

Out of nowhere came Brian’s voice in the back of his head once more. _I like that idea. Dinosaurs and lasers at the end of the world, flying around in space…_ Brian said to him. _We can use that._

“How do you always manage to blow my mind? I never expect it,” said Danny.

_Because our mental link is terribly strong, you big, tall doofus. The field of electricity between us is open and strong, and it allows me to step between the space and allow the two of us to communicate without opening our mouths._

“That’s kind of rad,” Danny said.

 _Very rad_ said Brian. 

“But y’know,” Danny said. “I wish you’d’ve given me a heads up or something, bro. It’s still super fucking weird to have to read my background thoughts like that.”

Brian struck just once, with supreme viciousness. The blow choked Danny for just a second but it was like a kitten batting at a mouse – not intended to hurt or harm, but to warn. He sat back and opened his eyes.

Brian was watching him, eyes unimpressed.

“All right,” Danny said.

Never let it be known that he didn’t know how to take a hint.

*** 

The next afternoon they posted a notice looking for a backing band. “Must play drums, guitar, and bass and be able to ‘grimace musically’, the flier read. He and Brian walked around the neighborhood, stapling it to various light posts and pasting it up to caulkboards and open windows. 

On their way home Danny started thinking about what they’d written down on the thing. He was admittedly a bit confused by the phrasing Brian had chosen but he was adamant about it. “What does that even mean?” he asked.

 _Remember that face Springsteen makes when he’s really wailing on his guitar?_ asked Brian. Then he demonstrated – or appeared to be demonstrating, with his balaclava slung low over his features.

Danny shook his head. “I have a feeling we’re going to be dealing with a lot of weirdos with this post.” And he couldn’t wait. Danny loved weirdos. He was one himself, after all.

***

After the fourth guy they interviewed pulled out his whistling navel act, Danny regretted his initial assessment. In fact he wished they’d gone ahead and put an ad in Rolling Stone or something like that; if it was good enough for Guns ‘n Roses and Poison then it was good for them. 

“We shouldn’t give up hope,” Ninja Brian insisted; Danny wasn’t giving up anything but what was left of his sanity. 

“I won’t, but if we don’t get an answer soon I think my brain’s going to pop,” he admitted.

The next team through the door was a bunch of people in awkward-looking spacemen. There was a guy in a yellow jumpsuit, a guy in a white outfit with an intimidating mask (its eyes glowed bright red in a startling way). There was a guy with a red jumpsuit and a golden mask and a guy with blue spandex and a lion’s mask to round out the group. Bass, guitar, drums, keyboards, weirdness. Perfect.

They brought their own instruments – the drummer with a drum machine tucked under his arm – and set up to sing and play a song for them. Danny stayed quiet as they plied their trade – he needed to think just as much as Brian needed to think to himself about what they were doing. If he interfered their mental bond they’d reveal the nature of their bond, which was something the

“So what do you call yourselves?” Danny chirped.

“Tupperware Remix Party,” the lead singer said, adjusting his sunglasses and trying to keep his cone-shaped hat from falling off of his head.

 _Of course they do,_ glowered Brian in the back of Danny’s mind, and he giggled aloud at the annoyance in his tone. The drummer’s eyes flashed red, and the lead singer frowned at him under his mustache.

Danny drew Brian into a huddle. “They’re very funky,” Danny noted.

_Funky and they sound fine. But I don’t want to hire a bunch of people who aren’t going to be reliable or regular._

“Brian, we dress up like ninjas and do jobs on the side to keep our unicorn van running and we live off of fast food while dating stewardesses. We will never be regular guys and neither will they. It’s a perfect match.”

 _I suppose so_.

“Have I ever steered us wrong?” Danny asked. His sense of leadership and confidence had been coming to the fore lately – he’d stopped going on jobs with Brian and hanging out regularly instead around the local record shop, frequently enough that they’d hired him when he asked if they needed part-time help.

 

*** 

The first rehearsal was a disaster. No one knew how to listen to anyone else, the live mix was off, sounding tinny through the mixing board when they came to listen to it together.

 _Sonic harmonization,_ said Brian. _That’s what we really need._

“How? Are you gonna like, make them honorary ninjas or something?”

Brian’s eyes were steely blue. _We will find a way. Perhaps we’ll have a group meditation session._

“Ugh, I do not want to sit still after that fuck up of a session.”

 _We’ll do it tomorrow,_ Brian said. _We must begin. We don’t have all the time in the world._

“Why not? Aren’t you like some kind of infinite, immortal dude?”

Brian stared flatly at Danny. _That’s not how ninja training works. You know this. You went through it yourself._

“Well, maybe it was different for you,” Danny pouted. Brian rolled his eyes. 

_Come with me. We must have a talk._

 

*** 

They ended up having to get rid of TWRP by promising them McDonalds (and the cat person a box of Frisky Feast. He was super committed to that whole space cat aura). While they ate, he and Brian walked by the seawall, down to the tiny section of beach they could make out from their apartment building. It was peaceful here. Danny thought to himself that he could spend his whole life in this one place, if not for the ambition burning in his gut.

“Do you think it’s a lot greener in California?” Danny asked. “I’ve never been. My family’s taken me all around the world and so has my job but…I’ve never been to LA.” He kicked a pebble, suddenly felling shy at his naivety. He hated the notion of Brian seeing him as less than sophisticated. 

_It is. I went, when I was a child. But we have more pressing problems. We need to consult an oracle and figure out how to make these children of the stars fall in harmony with us._

“And we’re gonna do that by…what? Meditating? Whishing on some kinda star? Ooh! BLOOD ALCHEMY!”

 _Shut up_ Brian said.

Danny said, “I want this to work out, Bri. Tell me what to do. You were my sensei before – be my sensei of rock and roll now.”

A little fission of electricity passed between them – Danny could feel it. He made no remark upon it. 

*** 

It needed less finessing than he hoped. A couple of notes. Brian took stern leadership of the whole outfit with the casual intensity that seemed to lead his entire life. The band took his every cue and followed Danny’s lead.

 _Sing,_ Brian demanded of him. _Sing as if your life depends on it._

He opened his mouth and it was just as it had been when he was child. The world seemed to stop. The whole place went still, then joined in with his harmony. Suddenly they weren’t in a shitty Jersey apartment anymore. They were in California, and the waves were slapping against the back of his knees. 

Had he been holding back on himself? Afraid, this whole time?

TWRP had rehearsal space in the icy cold warehouse in a meat packing plant. There, they climbed their way to harmony and a richer understanding of one another. Danny concentrating on projecting his voice. It was almost fall; Brian wanted to start moving before winter set in. _That’s what killed the Donner Party_ he told Danny. 

“What’s the Donner Party?”

 _Don’t look it up on a full stomach,_ Brian replied. Which was, really, all Danny needed to know.

*** 

They pooled their money together, saving mainly for gas, food, and the first month’s rent on a loft in LA. Just as September reached its zenith, Brian kissed (a surprisingly high numbe, Danny noted jealously) of flight attendants goodbye. The band guys said goodbye to the thing they too enjoyed about Jersey – Meouch brought a litter box (Danny wasn’t going to ask him how he planned on using it) and Sung came with a pile of Mortal Kombat films. Phobos had a stack of 70s soul records that he liked to play on his battery-operated hifi. Havve – just tended to stare at him like he was a gnat to be crushed, which was incredibly disconcerting. And then again there was Danny, with his Rush and his satin baseball jacket; the superhero tights he had bought for Halloween and ended up never wearing. He’d use it as a costume – hide himself behind layers of satin and feathers. There was his pile of Skittles and his sneakers; a pile of fantasy novels he’d bought at a penny swap to read. 

Brian came with nothing but a lotus planted in the dirt and an ancient tea set.

Danny would miss the neighborhood, but his stomach was filled with butterflies that slammed eagerly against his ribcage. 

There was nothing for them to do but keep on going, for as long as the road ran.

They climbed into the van, and waved goodbye to New Jersey forever.

*** 

Along the way, they met many people that made impressions upon him. Poor people who washed their feet in fountains; girls in red dresses; men who spent their afternoons playing chess in their town squares. Little kids in braces playing jump rope. He paid attention when they talked. 

He and Brian found a variety of women and a bunch of songs along the way. He met a girl who kicked him out for humping her vaccum. He romanced a woman who liked sensitive men, and a career woman who had no time for romance. He found a girl who didn’t like it when he sang about his spontaneous boners, and threw a one-person orgy when he found himself alone in Dallas. There were so many things that happened that he didn’t have time to tell the stories – he just recorded it. They played bars to add to their fund. They remembered and forgot, cried and laughed and bonded – becoming a family.

Then the engine stalled out in the mountains of Montana. 

*** 

It was so cold. Which was perhaps the most obvious statement in the history of the universe.

Danny couldn’t think very well. He was chattering under the blanket with Brian while Sung and Phobos used their incredible cosmic powers to harness the light of the sun to keep them from dying.

They were flicking a lighter every few minutes, just to give them the shared illusion of warmth. “Our father the sun will protect us,” said Sung at least once. Danny had no earthly idea what he was talking about, but he nodded and pretended to understand. 

That seemed to be his moddus opperandi with a lot of things lately.

He could feel Brian’s knee pressed against him – the whole side of his body warm and soft against Danny’s thigh. What could he do about the situation but grit his teeth and give him his own body heat in return? They would be waiting for twenty minutes at least. The last gas station was a mile back and Havve wasn’t the fastest robot. 

Was he a robot? Just some dude with a great costume and a sense of humor? The truth felt incredibly frangible lately. 

Danny shivered and Brian wrapped his arms around his neck.

 _You’re going to be fine,_ Brian said. _You’re just a little cold. You won’t be cold forever._

“That’s what the Donner Party said before the snow started falling,” Danny muttered.

 _I told you not to look that up,_ Brian said. _We don’t have the disadvantages to Donner Party had. For one thing people actually know that we’re somewhere and aren’t just running down a long old trail. Second, I could always try to commune with the yakuza I know. They probably know some sherpas who’d air drop down and rescue us._

“That sounds incredibly complicated,” Danny said.

_It would be. But one question – is it taking your mind off of things, trying to imagine it?_

“Kind of,” Danny said.

 _Then I’m doing my job._ Meouch had lain himself across Phobos’ and Sungs’ laps, in pure cat form he was simply trying to keep the two of them from freezing to death. Danny thought to himself that that was sweet. A kind form of what Brian was doing for Danny, holding on to him tightly. 

When both men fell asleep, Danny realized they were completely alone together - if not in fact than in spirit. It was an eerie kind of feeling. Somehow it was much more intimate than when they’d even meditated together for the purpose of their mental link.

_Maybe this will quiet your mind and let me sleep._

“Huh?”

Danny wasn’t expecting what happened next. Warm, stubby hands cupped his face and pulled him across the short distance that yawned between them. 

Brian cupped his chin and drew their mouths close. It was so unexpected yet such a necessary feeling, such a true moment, that every single hair on the back of Danny’s hand stood up and spiked. 

“Ninja Brian…” he didn’t even realize he’d called him that, his mind was that far gone – “What are you…?”

Brian’s lips were warm and dry – Danny felt them brush against his before they settled against his. He made not pressing demands – there was no jabbing tongue, nor was there the sense of sweet submission of a woman’s mouth against his own lips. Instead he felt Brian sigh and melt into him while holding him in a sort of deathlock. Danny could feel Brian’s heart hammering away against his chest, belying his calm demeanor – reminding him of his occasional jealousy, his tremendous rage when there were enemies approaching. Danny shivered. He opened his mouth.

The kiss went on for minutes. It felt like hours. He felt comfortably possessed as they touched, their mouths sparking off some new riot deep within Danny’s heart. He’d never felt this way for a woman. He’d never felt this way for anyone in his entire life. The realization almost made him fearful for his poor heart. 

If Brian could do this to him with a simple kiss, what would it be like to love him?

Why was he even thinking of such a thing?

Why was he kissing him at all?

What had possessed his body and soul in a single, fell swoop?

He pushed at Brian’s shoulders and Brian let him go. Danny stared at his face. It was blunter than he’d expected; a stony expression. Rocky. Danny was reminded of Benjamin Grimm after he’d been turned into the Thing. Brian even had the wide blue eyes that Ben Grimm possessed. 

“Why are you…?” he started asking. Then a light pierced the body of the truck and sent them scrambling apart. 

The tow had come, and they would be forced to get on with life as if that one amazing instant had never happened.

*** 

He and Brian didn’t talk about what they’d done. Phobos, Meouch and Sung didn’t remember it, having slept through the kiss. Brian did what Brian always did, and resolutely gritted his teeth and kept looking ahead at what was splayed out before them. 

But Danny kept thinking about it. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it, really. The feeling of Brian’s lips – the electric shot of lust running through all of him. The unique and powerful instant of the moment. He would be mopping a floor for spare change, busking with the TWRP guys, or sitting alone and suddenly the feeling would return to him like a beautiful dream.

Brian was the last person he wanted to have feelings for. He was frightening and tough, and had experienced all of the things that Danny had run away from as quickly as he could. He and Brian could never work their differences out They’d always be yin and yang – two sides of the same coin unable to meet and mate. 

But that kiss.

That kiss kept screaming in the back of his mind.

***  
He wrote a song about being gay.

Could you imagine?

If he was gay?

Brian was the one who was gay, after all.

Mostly.

***

The first time Brian ever darted him out of anger was when he heard that song. Danny had been so much quicker than he, and had come prepared – like a Loony Toons villain, he had been ready with his dummy and his sense of speed. But Brian was disappointed. 

_No more gay jokes_ , he demanded, and Danny could only wonder why. They had jokes about his dick’s dysfunction. They had jokes about his rampant, hungry sexual conquests and his almost desperate need for affection. They had jokes about his desire to have a three way (the one he had had was fun but fraught with anxiety for him). They had jokes about Danny fucking his way across the universe and eventually exploding in outer space after trying to fuck a martin. He had no idea why Brian was drawing the line here, and why it was so important that Danny not make those jokes.

It was Danny’s suggestion that they instead weave the song into every live performance – and every live performance should end with Danny singing If We Were Gay and taking a ‘poisoned’ dart to the back of the neck. That seemed to add the capper to the act, the final little bit that made the audience roar and finally got them the attention they needed. Landing face-first on the stage wasn’t’ the most comfortable thing, but Danny was willing to do it for Brian. He was actually willing to do a lot of things for Brian, not that Brian would ever ask him for favors.

The concerts were getting a little bigger. Sung had figured out how to turn Havve’s armor into some kind of a video recorder and they ended up taking footage of their antics and putting them on the internet. Some of those were getting a lot of views. Ninja Sex Party, it seemed, was more popular in some places than Danny had ever imagined it might be. 

But in this minute, staring up into Brian’s enraged face, seeing his big blue eyes flash with self-defensive anger. They shone with a glitter of tears, of shame. Of fear, Danny realized suddenly.

 _He’s gay,_ Danny realized suddenly. _He’s gay, and he doesn’t have the courage to come out to me._ He locked the realization away quickly, before Brian could see it through their mental link. Before he could even tell what Danny was really thinking. 

Danny didn’t know how he felt about that revelation. He didn’t have much experience with gay men, didn’t have much experience with gay feelings beyond being kissed by Brian so suddenly and fearlessly. He realized the only reason Brian had been so happy to kiss him and so free of hesitation to do so back in the van was because the TWRP guys were gone or asleep. What sort of hang-ups was he fighting? Was it something in the code he wasn’t familiar with?

He nodded just once. Brian stuck out his thumb and hitchhiked to the nearest dojo, and Danny didn’t see him for a full five days after their fight. 

He’d done what his father had done, and his father before him. He’d become the best ninja in the fucking world, and done it all without the help of only one man, and that one man seemed to wish he was dead. Danny didn’t know how to heal the wound. He just knew that they were finally starting to get there, at long last.

California loomed before him, orange and cream and gold, and he thought to himself that if he could just reach out for it, he’d hold serenity in his hands forever.

 

***

So this was Los Angeles. 

It was grittier than he’d expected; dirtier, nastier. He and Brian stayed in the Bus, which they parked in the . The robots did their finding-out-about-humanity thing. Brian got a job as a fry cook. Danny kept looking for work, kept searching for the place that would give NSP a platform and elevate them to the next level. At the moment he had no idea where that place was – who he was going to help and who was his enemy. He made friends with a guy named Arin who was willing to promo the band for a couple of hours a day in exchange for free publicity for his cartoon show; they spent hours of recording time in his shitty rec room recording studio. They made an album and stuck it up on Bandcamp. It did all right, but they weren’t going to pay the bills with it.

Danny wasn’t entirely sure why he’d worked so hard to get to this town when it ignored him, belching smoke and acid at him from every single direction. He felt confused and lonely, and the distance Brian had put between them for everything but the purpose of the act left him confused. The mental link between them had been closed and sealed, and he couldn’t reach Brian, couldn’t convince him to unlock it. There wasn’t much he could do with that fact. He didn’t want to capsize their fragile bond, ruin everything, cause the feelings between them to turn into a pain-filled inferno of anger and regret. Danny did the right thing. He stayed away and dated girls. He kept his eyes up on the prize of fame. Arin was going to help the band get more gigs, and the hits on their videos kept getting better. The TWRP guys were playing for money on the Santa Monica Pier. There was a big break, a big crisis point, that was looming out there for both of them. 

Danny wasn’t ready to confront it. But when Brian was ready, he’d be willing to listen. It was all he could do for the man who had tried to protect him when he was at his most physically vulnerable.

 

****

The big break wasn’t at all what Danny had expected. They were on the radio suddenly, in a tiny California town, and a mid-level sitcom star decided to tweet out a link to one of their videos. Their hit and subscriber counts went up, and Danny suddenly couldn’t keep up with the offers for appearances. The rooms stayed small but Brian could finally afford to quit his frycook job, and they could finally afford to move out of their shared room in a cheap motel. 

In a year’s time the apartment turned into a house. Danny called it a moonbase, told the fans that they were living their best lives with Martian babes and a cooler filled with Margaritas. They didn’t need to know the truth. That was, after all, one of those things that could be frangible, malleable. Danny wanted to blur the line between himself and “Danny”; as much as he could. He wanted to disappear his bloody ninja past, his perfect childhood, his lost youth. He wanted to make a clean bed of all of his sins and be a good, happy, proud ninja boy. That was all that was required of him, and all that was needed of Danny’s presence. To be happy was to be free, even if the darker shades of life tended to throw in his way. 

It was the lowest point he’d reached since they’d formed the band. And he had no idea how to worm his way out of it.

****

 _We need to talk_ Danny broadcast to Brian. They were standing backstage waiting to go on, standing at the rim of an oversized stage. There was a large, stuffed Ninja Brian on one end of the stage wearing a huge unicorn horn, and one of Danny on the opposite end. The thirty or so people who’d showed up for the gig were making a lot of noise. Danny would have been excited, were this dark cloud not hanging over the two of them, getting between them and leaving him feeling like an anxious ball of sweat. 

_We can talk when you stop making a joke out of my sexuality,_ Brian said. _Shocked that I’m one of those queers you like to make fun of?_

“I don’t like to do that!” Dany blurted out, his tone filled with outrage. “I would never do that. A lot of my friends are gay and I wouldn’t ever be mean. I just want things to be the way they were….”

 _Before the kiss?_ Brian asked. 

“No,” Danny said. “I don’t want to forget that. I don’t want to forget anything we did during that trip at all. I just…I have a lot to figure out about me.”

 _We all do,_ Brian said. He pulled his balaclava down over his mouth. _we’re on_ , he said.

****

The gig was long, hot and sweaty – there was a dirty joke in there, and Danny made several during the show. He watched as the room filled with more people. He was reaching them. They were actually paying attention, actually hearing what he had to sing. To scream, to be more accurate.

And he was calling out for attention, for affection, up there alone on the stage. He was demanding they love each other, forgive each other. Feel. When he left the stage he was sweaty and weak-kneed, but he felt like he was getting somewhere.

He celebrated by getting a bottle of wine dumped on his head at the bar’s lounge and having a huge sushi dinner. Brian watched him silently over the meal as the TWRP guys chattered away. He was somewhere between elated and scared. He had his dinner and felt time passing along. There was something magical to the way it was coming together. There was something magical in feeling united as a band.

If only he and Brian could work things out. And if only Brian would accept his apology. Then things would be perfect.

**** 

Danny’s songwriting subjects became more ridiculous as he sought out titles for the next album. Somehow he wrote something about fucking a sandwich in the middle of the night and Brian told him that it was a genius song. It was nice, to hear the word ‘genius’ attached to his name. It was the only compliment Brian’d given him in as many months, and he was starving for it the way an astronaut might gasp for oxygen on their lonely planet. 

The next album did well. The third did even better. Everything seemed to be accelerating, so much so that they couldn’t keep up with the progress of the fanbase. In March Danny got his first restraining order against a stalker who decided to sleep in the dumpster outside of his building until he agreed to give her his sperm to procreate ‘a new alien race’. In July they watched the fireworks outside of his new house.

In August, Brian said he was going to leave the band.

“What?! You can’t leave me! Not now! We’re just starting to get somewhere.”

Brian shook his head. _Have you not figured out that your feelings aren’t the most important ones on this planet?_ The statement gave Danny pause. _Besides, you don’t need me anymore. I’ve taught you everything I know as a sensei. I saved you from an insalubrious fate. Aren’t you happy with the life my work has given you?_

“I…of course.” He had a life but it was empty of love. His parents were shunning him for rejecting the ways of the ninja. His house was big and white and vacant besides the possessions he habitually bought and rarely looked at, with expanses of walls with no color and sheets that were never stained with anything more than his drool. He begged people to stay with him most nights. It was too lonely, to huge, small and worthless enough to make him feel like he was hurtling into the sun. 

_Then you don’t need me. I’m planning to go to London, to meditate in peace. Perhaps I will see you in the next life. As you well know, Sung can play piano, so you won’t need me at all in my absence…_

“Brian!”

_If you cannot accept my true nature then I cannot stay here and watch what we have created be perverted through greed, prejudice and selfishness. Goodbye, Daniel._

Daniel. How long had it been since he’d been somebody’s Daniel? “Brian…”

_I’m not going to wait for you to change your mind, Danny. I can’t. I have a life that needs to be led without you._

“But…”

 _Just let me go,_ he said.

And what could Danny do but do exactly what he asked him to do? “Brian, I accept you,” he said, as Brian stood in the doorway. “I accept you and, and…” But the words stuck in his throat. He remembered his first encounter with romance at seventeen, as a gawky teenage ninja in a bodega. The girls had laughed at him back then. How could he ever hope to drag the right words from his lungs when he couldn’t manage to look him in the eye?

Brian silently opened the door and slipped outside, leaving Danny alone with his thoughts, his open palm. The nothingness of the fame he’d craved for so long.

*** 

Dan and TWRP struggled along on their own. It was easy enough to write funny routines about Danny meeting strange robots who didn’t understand what a quick hump was. That fish out of water shit never, ever failed, no matter how much pressure he put on the routine. 

But the guys knew something was missing. The energy, even the cruelty, that Brian brought to the room was gone. And Danny had no idea how to replace it.

The girls came out to see him, naturally. They loved his long hair and his quick smile. They thought he hung the moon. They fell in love with him for a couple of hours every night, and then disappeared. 

Danny floated on the surface of it all. He didn’t know what to grab on to, whose hand to hold. He simply tried not to fall through the cracks. There were moments where it felt like he was doing that. Like he was hurtling into the black through all of the white he was surrounding himself with. That no matter what he did he was going to fail on his own. 

Was it codependency? He was scared that that was what it was. That he couldn’t face life by himself. Worse, that he was lying to himself about how much of an adult he really was at heart. Did he want to spend his whole life trying to fill in the void that Ninja Brian had left in his life? Shouldn’t he try to fill it himself with his own sense of self-worth and happiness? 

Danny found himself wondering – between books he’d always promised himself he’d read and tv shows he wanted to marathon. Between hikes in the woods and pancake breakfasts. Between rehearsals and long songwriting sessions in half-empty Starbucks. Bowls of Ramen and dishes of sushi. Arin told him he was headed for the big leagues, but what was the point of making it when you went home to stare at the whiteness of your ceiling?

** 

Phobos was the one who suggested they play New Jersey. Danny agreed, because he was hoping his parents would come to the concert. He sent them tickets – balcony seats, up high near the stars. He hoped that would remind them of his singing voice – the high, wonderful tones he used to make. They wanted him to be proud of him. 

They tore up the tickets and sent them back to him.

Danny knew then he’d never be accepted at home again. Even if his dojo had forgiven him and was willing to look the other way while he literally fucked the sun, it didn’t matter to his father and mother. As gentle as they’d been, as loving as they’d been – as alarmed as they’d been by his singing – he was now a stranger to them. He’d die alone and be cremated and buried apart from them. That he’d disgraced his father in a way that his parents could never forgive. He heard through the grapevine that his sister was slitting throats for the richest yakuza in Japan and felt a little pang in his heart. Maybe this was the way it needed to be; she could be the world’s toughest ninja, and he could be a semi-famous singer traveling the world in his unicorn van.

He still closed his eyes and wished on stars for her. Just in case she was wishing on them, too.

The plans were grand, otherwise. His old friends would be coming, the ones who even made fun of him, with their bald spots and tired-eyed wives. They’d give him hundreds of dollars to watch him bounce around like a bean in a skillet, and all the while he’d be thinking _look at me! I’m a star! I was born to sing, and my fucking dreams are coming true!_

But when he stepped out on that stage, in front of an audience of a thousand people, everything inside of him froze. The natural performer in him, alive and loud, went still and frozen.

He made a little gasping sound, and then another. 

But the music would not come without Brian. 

 

*** 

 

He ended up waiting tables in a dive bar in Pomona. They let him sing during karaoke night, and sometimes he’d get an ‘aren’t you?’ A ‘didn’t you?’ 

He was and he did, but that was then and this was now.

He was happier this way. It felt like he’d gotten some of his innocence back. He and TWRP still shared a house – a smaller one in a worse neighborhood, but the backslide had stopped, and he no longer felt like an impregnable prince standing on top of a mountain. He had a real life now, one that was better for his love-starved yearning for fame, and better than his childhood fantasy of being a ninja.

Brian’s life was cat-corner to Danny’s own now. He kept trying to reach out to Brian, not knowing what he’d say if he could press the words between his awkward lips. Brian’s mental link was no louder than a whisper, but he could feel him still at the back of his head, calling him. Trying to get Danny to find him. Trying to find the right connection. Didn’t he have another kid to help out? Some other protégé who wouldn’t deal with the weird feelings Brian gave him by writing a mean song about it?

Danny could do no more than desperately try to page him when he felt lonely, as if he’d lost Brian in a crowded restaurant. 

A really good ninja can do many things, but he can’t turn time forward, or travel through it. But in the boundaries of fiction, through the work of his own making, he could. Danny was writing novel in his spare time; about a tall, awkward ninja who falls in love with a unicorn wizard.

***

Danny wasn’t ready to see him, sitting on the other side of the bar in jeans and a button-down flamingo-spattered shirt, his blue eyes bleary but cast firmly in Danny’s direction.

Danny felt his stomach try to crawl its way out of his throat. 

“What can I get you?” he asked, voice shaking.

 _A beer,_ Brian signed, but his hands wouldn’t form the words. He re-opened the mental link, and just like that he was back in Danny’s head, blasting out his swaggering intensity.

“I think you’ve had enough, dude.” 

Brian shrugged. _Got kicked out of the organization. They found out I was queer. So I think it’s my right to get as fucked up as I want to be._

“What?! Fuck, that’s terrible.”

_You can’t expect open-mindedness from a thousand year old organization. So fuck it. Get me drunk._

Danny gave him an O’Douls. Brian looked at it, looked up at him, and laughed. 

_You’re still trying to look after me, even after all these years?_

“Of course. You’re still my sensei. And…and a lot more than that. But you don’t want to hear it.”

_Maybe I do. You never know what a person’s willing to listen to. But I might have bigger ears now._

“You probably know I choked on stage. Everything fell apart after that. I’m just not hungry for it the way I used to be.”

_I wouldn’t go back to it either. Maybe we were meant to have fun, to do it as a hobby. But professionally, with all that pressure on us? It wasn’t healthy._

“I know. I guess things work out the way they should.”

 _Except for one. I know that I was far too angry to listen to you at the time. But for the last year I’ve been wondering about you. Wondering about what you were trying to say to me. Have your feelings changed?_ Brian asked. Danny flushed. _Do you feel the way you used to about me?_

He closed his eyes and said, with some intensity in his tone _Did you love me? Do you still love me even now?_

“Brian…” he whispered. Well, what could he say to that? He knew Brian could see the answer floating about in the kaleidoscope of his mind. He knew that Brian could also hear the fear there, the weakness, the uncertainty. He would have to choose aloud. This time he wasn’t afraid of saying the wrong thing. This time he wasn’t going to let his inner homophobe win. This time the words would pass his teeth and slide off of his tongue.

“I love you. Of course, I love you.”

Brian’s smile was less bleary than it had been moments before. _Then I’m honored to have your love. I know it’ll be different with me here with you, but I’ll help bring the rent in…_

“Ssh. You don’t have to say anything. I need to like, finish my shift, but after…”

Brian smirked. His eyes flew to the karaoke stand across the room. _What do you say? For old times’ sake?_

“Brian, I’m on shift…” he trailed off as he raised the arm of the bar. “Really? You’re not even going to let me call for…” He reached for Dan’s hand and pulled him toward the stage. 

They had to wait for an Italian businessman to stop aurally slaughtering Christina Aguillera before mounting the stage. Brian’s fingers were too slippery to hold a keyboard, but on the menu for karaoke was one of the songs they’d sold, one of their minor popular hits – now a trivia question, a ‘oh yeah, I remember that’. Danny punched in the numbers, and onscreen came a vaporwaveish pattern of bricks and stones. He laughed. His coworkers were howling. 

“Hello,” he said smoothly. “So. We’re Ninja Sex Party.”

More laughter. He looked over his shoulder and jumped; Brian had pulled his balaclava, presumably out of the front pocket of his pants, and was starting at the crowd while flipping them duel birds.

“This is one of our biggest hits. And it goes out to the ladies in the crowd.”

And he closed his eyes, and he gestured with his big palm and started singing about slaying dragons for his nonexistent beloved. 

He realized Brian was dancing behind him. He realized that crowd was clapping along at full speed. He knew and understood that it wasn’t going to get any better than this, and he never, ever wanted the moment to end.

He considered all he’d lived through and all he would live through before he finally passed away. The innocent kid yelling in his sweet voice; the teenager sobbing on the floor of a shower; the man collapsing in the face of his broken dreams. All of them were Danny on some level, but none of them would define his whole life. Danny wouldn’t let that be so; he was too interested in all of the tomorrows that were stretching out before him.

And who knew what the next step would be? Who knew if this was a good dream, just a sweet, silly little dream, and he’d wake up alone again.

Maybe it all ended here, in this mid-sized restaurant, with a couple thousand people yelling about dragons to him. Maybe they’d flame out and die on the floor, like a spark that never bloomed. 

Maybe he was still dreaming this, sitting and meditating alone in his room at the dojo, trying not to die over his feelings of self-alienation.

Maybe he had frozen to death at the side of the road waiting for someone to pick him up, waiting for a Brian who never kissed him and a Havve who never saved him.

Maybe he was still onstage with three robots and a cat man behind him, and a suspiciously empty spot to the right of him, staring up like a death mask.

But Danny rejected those ideas. This was real life. This was his reward for being a good person, for slaying dragons and saving his ninja and rescuing a bunch of aliens from certain doom and unfucking the future by getting a blowjob. It was everything he’d earned after working so hard for his happy ending; his birthright. His destiny.

This was how his story ended. 

He had made it so.

He pulled up the bottom of Brian’s balaclava and kissed him there, right in front of the screaming crowd.


End file.
